School adds student e-mail to increase communication

A majority of high school students are already connected to the rest of the world electronically with phones and computers.

Now Brady kids in grades 9-12 are also directly connected to their teachers and classmates.

Every high school student received an e-mail account this month which provides another method for communicating with teachers in and out of school.

“As a school we are ever striving to increase our communication and technology usage,” said Robbi McKenney, computer instructor and technology coordinator. “Student e-mail takes us one step closer to the 21st century school that we want to be.”

Students will be able to collaborate for projects, e-mail teachers their assignments or questions, use the e-mail as a “cyber file backup” or just use it as a file storage tool.

For instance, McKenney said if a student is working on an assignment at school, he or she can now send it in an e-mail and access it at home, replacing the need for flash or thumb drives.

“Other common e-mail accounts that students may have such as Hotmail or Yahoo are blocked by the school’s filter,” McKenney said.

The school-provided accounts through ePals have the same capabilities as other accounts but are in a moderated environment for security and safety, she said.

“Several students have said that the new e-mail accounts are making their lives easier,” McKenney said.

The district is working on several other technology advancement projects as well including online classroom discussion forums with ePals Schoolblogs and teacher WordPress Web sites.

“Staff members are working hard to integrate technology into their classroom activities,” McKenney said.

Teachers not only attend training sessions at the local educational service units but also in-house training McKenney calls “Tech Time.”

“We have growing access to a lot of great technology through grants and school purchases,” McKenney said. “We just need to make sure that our teachers have the training to integrate it into their teaching.”

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